For my upcoming prompt at dVerse Poetics: On Privilege. Also linking it up with The Tuesday Platform at WRT, where I am hosting this week as well. Come, join us for the poetics and the discussions on both these platforms.
As a biological man in early 20s, belonging to a savarna Hindu family, with no apparent physical or mental disabilities, I enjoy a lot of privileges in a systematically oppressive society. My brown skin, my queerness, my atheism, and my unconventional believes stick out sometimes in a world (my country and state as physical spheres of my experience) obsessed with certain skin colours and religions and the strictures of patriarchy and heteronormativity. I enjoy the privilege of living in an urban setting with its social and physical infrastructure and its proximity to institutions of power, which mostly shields my “vulnerabilities” from violence and repression. Most importantly, all these privileges have amounted for this privilege of language that I enjoy and utilize freely for my expression.